Breaking Bad: Your Brain on Habits

Remember the time you’ve put your “mind to something,” and you accomplished it?

The same goes for weight loss.

Today we are going to talk about how your brain runs on habits that give you unwanted long term results.

Here’s the thing, the diet industry, medical journals, and what “they” recommend is focusing 100% on the object of your desire: FOOD.

It’s no wonder that we believe if we control the food, our problems will go away.

Don’t get me wrong, understanding what food is wholesome/delicious/nutritious is essential, but that’s 25% of the picture.

You can change the food, but if there’s no change from within in YOU, you will always return to the same habits your brain’s wired on.

75% (HABITS around why and how you eat) + 25% (FOOD you consume)= 100% healthiest version of YOU.

Let’s be real: all the habits you have formed serve as a solution and are doing something for you.

So when you are eating outside of being physically hungry: what is food solving for you?

It would be foolish for us to pretend that it’s not fun, tastes good, and or taking you away from something in the moment.

It’s the aftermath, the extra weight that you don’t like.

So why change?

1.

If the habit you are doing brings about unwanted secondary results like your extra weight and not feeling good in your body.

2.

The real problem doesn’t really go away. The stress, anxiety, loneliness, boredom and not feeling good enough…are all still there. The food just distracts you from it.

3.

Wouldn’t it be great to solve your problem without “needing” anything from the outside to make you okay?

So how do you rewire your brain from breaking bad long term results and starting new ones that will work for your overall greater good?

What you need to know:

Your brain has two main parts.

1. Primitive brain (a.k.a. Lower brain, lizard brain) this is the survival brain that we share with all animals.

2. The executive brain (a.k.a Prefrontal cortex, higher self, soul) is what sets you and me apart from animals and makes us humans. It’s the part of you that if I were to ask what you are thinking about, you would be able to observe yourself thinking and tell me. That’s the real you, and this is why the real YOU are not your thoughts.

Every habit starts in the executive brain as you learn something new, and once you get good at it, it gets transferred to your primitive brain, where it goes on automatic. It’s a regular pattern that does something for you in the moment and can become so secondary that it can feel involuntary.

This worked well when your ancestors were avoiding pain by running away from predators.

However, in 2020, the pain that we are running away from sounds like this:

Stress

Anxiety

Loneliness

Lack of joy

So you run from your modern-day predators towards something that will bring you pleasure.

Say hello to all the false-pleasure A-listers!

Food (chocolate, dessert, ice-cream, salty, crunchy)

Wine

Social-media

Your brain remembers this because it gets rewarded with all the feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin when it consumes all the false pleasures s it can feel better in the moment and forget the pain.

Because it wants to conserve energy, it associates triggers for you to remember that thing that makes it feel good, so it doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable with the stress, anxiety, loneliness, and or lack of joy.

Here are some triggers that you may recognize but never realized it’s a trigger because the habit has become so automated, it feels like you act against yourself and go on autopilot:

Common cues/triggers:

uncomfortable feelings like stress, boredom, anxiety, loneliness

It’s 4 pm: go to the fridge and eat

The kids are down: time for yourself to relax and eat; this should be fun.